Aldrich, Richard J., Gary D. Rawnsley, and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley, eds. The Clandestine Cold War in Asia, 1945-1965: Western Intelligence, Propaganda and Special Operations. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2000.
During the 1990s, scholars of intelligence in the United States and Great Britain, especially intelligence historians, have benefited from significant releases of declassified records. In the United States, recent works on intelligence owe much to the government's own willingness to declassify the operational records of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and early CIA files. Outside organizations like the National Security Archive and the Cold War International History Project have also pushed government agencies to declassify material. In Great Britain, declassification is more restricted, but researchers there have been at work over the last four years with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) collection. On both sides of the Atlantic, however, historians of World War II and Cold War have oriented most of their work on Europe. In June 1999, the University of Nottingham's Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies sponsored a conference on the "Clandestine Cold War in Asia" to rectify this deficiency. Papers from this conference have been brought together in The Clandestine Cold War in Asia: 1945-1965. It represents a sample of the cutting-edge in Cold War intelligence history.
The editors of Clandestine Cold War, Richard Aldrich, Gary Rawnsley and Ming-Yeh Rawnsley, are colleagues at the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies and, separately, have published widely on issues of wartime/Cold War intelligence, psychological warfare and radio propaganda in the Near and Far East. In a deft introduction to Clandestine Cold War, they assert that to appreciate the "hotness" of the Cold War in Asia, especially its clandestine aspects, researchers must dig below the superpower conflict and reach into the cauldron of local nationalisms and the effects of decolonization. They also address the clash of policies between Western powers in Asia . the United States' interest in promoting a postwar liberal world order often collided with the interests of former colonial powers like Great Britain and France. Finally and refreshingly, in this reviewer's opinion, Aldrich and the Rawnsleys focus on the interaction between intelligence, propaganda and special operations as instruments of state policy.
Clandestine Cold War is divided into three parts: China and the Chinese perimeter, Southeast Asia and the Malayan Emergency. Eleven authors have contributed to the volume, but as with many edited works, the quality of the articles is mixed. Most are examples of solid historical work that carefully combine either substantial archival work or the latest from the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series supplemented by a range of secondary sources. In terms of readability, only two of the articles are heavily filled with acronyms and organizational charts. Matthew Aid's study of American intelligence prior to and during the Korean conflict, as well as Philip Davies' administrative outline of the British Special Intelligence Service's (SIS) Singapore station, required careful reading and frequent returns to the book's Abbreviations. The articles in the first part work well in tandem to provide a clearer picture of the intelligence war along China's Pacific "Rimland," while each of the third part's articles should be required reading for anyone delving deeply into the British counterinsurgency campaign in Malaya.
Unfortunately, such cohesion is not reflected among the articles in the middle part on Southeast Asia. Before faulting the editors, this criticism could actually back one of their claims - the region is ethnically and politically complex. It is perhaps futile to expect complete clarity on a multifaceted region from only five contributions. That said, the articles in the second part are of a much broader chronological range and the styles of the articles are quite mixed as well. Rather than straight intelligence histories, the second part gives examples of foreign policy tracing, managerial analysis and even literary criticism. While varied research methods and writing styles can be positive in an edited work, Eva-Lotta Hedman's discussion of former Filipino president Ramon Magsaysay in light of symbolism in American fiction might have been better applied to a work of cultural studies. Her article stands out awkwardly against the other traditional histories in Clandestine Cold War. All-in-all, this reviewer thought that the book's first and third parts were the academic equivalent of going for a brisk swim in the source material while the section on Southeast Asia felt more like dipping one's foot in the water.
Each section had one or two very strong contributions. Aid's study is a stinging indictment of the American intelligence organization in the Korean War. He effectively demonstrates the divisiveness between civilian and military intelligence, as well as intra-service bickering. US intelligence was plagued by poor leadership and poor liaison with South Korean intelligence, in addition to a lack of area knowledge and linguistic training. These circumstances stunted accurate evaluation of the North Korean threat. In the same section, Johannes Lombardo documents the difficulties that arose between the United States and Great Britain over the US Consulate's support of anti-communist dissident groups in Hong Kong. Both Lombardo and Gary Rawnsley allude to the constraints that politics and alliance relations can place on executing effective psychological and political warfare. Current students of offensive information warfare will also find Lombardo's work helpful, especially as he outlines the use of the United States Information Service (USIS) in "information operations" against the communist mainland.
In the second part, Mona Bitar gives a detailed assessment of US-French-Cambodian foreign (and covert) relations in the late 1950s. Scholars interested in what intelligence operators do with their skills following the dissolution of their organizations will want to pay close attention to Richard Aldrich's work on former SOE members involved in the Karen struggle in Burma after World War II. Aldrich's article should open up further research on cooperation and competition between the private and public sectors in the area of foreign policy. Finally, in the third section, readers have been given a forum to compare and contrast the dominant traditions of Malayan Emergency historiography. The analyses by Karl Hack and Brian Stewart should be read together - Hack tries to synthesize the "British" and "communist" accounts of the Emergency, while Stewart, a participant in Malaya, gives a first-hand rendition of the use of intelligence as an instrument of counterinsurgency.
One significant reservation against purchasing Clandestine Cold War, however, is the fact that the publisher previously released the articles in the Winter 1999 issue of their quarterly journal Intelligence and National Security. If one has access to the Frank Cass journal, the book becomes immediately superfluous. Overlooking that criticism, The Clandestine War in Asia introduces new and uncharted areas of historical research. It is an excellent follow-through to recent works focusing on the Asian theater during World War II, such as Maochun Yu's OSS in China, Bernard Wasserstein's The Secret War in Shanghai and Aldrich's own Intelligence and the War Against Japan. And if one wishes to have all of the articles in an easy-to-access format, Clandestine War would be a good purchase.
Brian Auten
University of Reading, UK